Despite a shortened Target day, due to testing, the kids worked really hard and accomplished quite a bit!Algebraic Thinking: Hands On Equations was exciting with our very first Legal Move ! This is a conceptual understanding that allows children to solve more complicated equations with ease! Most of them made it through Lesson 3!

Novel Study: We continued our work on Mixed Up Files by creating our own mixed up file to keep our resources for this book study. The children enjoyed the opportunity to use elaboration & divergent thinking to create a unique folder to store all of their "Mixed Up Files" about the book. *Bring in any magazine or newspaper photos or letters to add to your folder, if you like.

Focus Study-SPACE: We finished our research on early astronomers, Galileo, Nicholas Copernicus, and Sir Isaac Newton. Ask your child what is an interesting connection between Galileo & Copernicus.

Well...our day got started a bit late due to CogAT. Once testing was wrapped up, we got underway with high effort!

Algebraic Thinking: We built on our first lesson in Hands-On-Equations to continue to solve for unknown numbers-variables. Most of the children finished Lesson 1 and moved onto Lesson 2 featuring problems like this:3x = x + 4 or 4x = 2x + 6. I'm really proud of their evaluative reasoning skills!

Focus Study-Space: We continued our research about early astronomers- Galileo, Copernicus, and Sir Isaac Newton. Check out the Target Glog-Third grade page for a Solar System Glog (Fun games, videos & more).

Novel Study: We dove right back into our book-From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. The kids did a nice job of close reading to find the evaluative thinking answers to our novel study questions. **We'll be creating our "Mixed-Up Files" folders, so you can bring magazine photos, letters, or pictures printed out from the computer to decorate if you like.

Algebraic thinking was the lead-off for our day. We began Hands-On Equations today, with Lesson 1. The children soaked this in and really showed excellent convergent thinking to solve some basic equations like: 2x + 2 = 4.

Next we shared a wonderful, touching story to commemorate the heroes and many lives lost on September 11, 2001. The book was a beautiful story of compassion and grace, 14 Cows for America.

That was followed by convergent & divergent thinking with logic puzzles and an elaborative thinking transformation. These kids are getting good at logic--time for some more challenging puzzles!

We continued our focus study with research about early astronomers, Galileo, Copernicus, and Sir Isaac Newton. The kids are enjoying digging into this topic!

Finally, we enjoyed finishing the first chapter in our brand new books, From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. We're designing our own case file to keep up with what we learn from the book. *Don't forget that you can bring in pictures to glue on your file!

HW: 1. What is a Bobby? As in, who would carry a Bobby Whistle? 2. First in Math

It was another amazing day in Third Grade Target! We started right off with some very challenging work on convergent thinking with a verbal logic puzzle, "Directive Detective". Some of the kids said it made their brains hurt! Some asked for more because they liked it so much! My kind of kids!

That was followed by some creative divergent thinking with ways to get fit and design your own fitness shoe. The things your children come up with are truly innovative!

We continued our vocabulary building with another story from Weighty Words. Ask your child what the word was. Hmm...do you know what it means?

We tried a new kind of verbal puzzles called "Link Winks". The kids loved them! Challenging, but fun!